Invisibility Of New Media
I woke up this morning, immediately checked my Facebook, Instagram and Youtube accounts all before getting out of bed. I then went down stairs turned on my TV opened my laptop and began replying to emails all before thinking about breakfast. Before leaving my house I was more concerned with having a full battery on my phone before making sure I had lunch. All this got me thinking. Every year more of my time is spent being completely consumed and exposed to media. The fear of being unconnected could argue that an “ontological shift can take place because media cannot be seen as separate to us, to the point that we live in media, rather than with media.” (Deuze, 2011). There are extensive societal and cultural consequences arising largely due to the way media has become invisible, being so “pervasive and ubiquitous we now fail to register the presence on media in our lives.” (Deuze, 2011) Growing up in what some would say a techno-social hybrid world the concurrent use of multiple media platforms has become a regular feature of my everyday life so it could be argued that as media becomes invisible, they become all-powerful. It now seems the disappearance of media will be a key challenge for people living in the 21st century. I needed to put this to the test though. I guess you could say I’m part of the media generation living in a ‘mediapolis’ “Rather than "using" it, people may be "used by it”. Direct effects are also tied to thinking of technologies in a simplistic way the more you use them, the more they use you, and the more you are influenced by them.” (Flew, 2014) “In this abundantly mediated and progressively mobile lifestyle media are such an automated, indispensable and altogether inalienable part of one's activities, attitudes and social arrangements that they disappear, they essentially become the life that people are experiencing on a day to day basis.” (Deuze, 2011) To understand this theory of media being an expression of everyday life I wanted to test it out for myself. For one day I would shut off all media platforms to see how I would react and if it was possible to live normally. I was able to function relatively normal for that one day with no forms of media but could I survive a week? Or a month? Maybe not, interestingly what I took from this experiment is that if we live our lives in media we must choose to take responsibility for it, it's up to us to find the balance of situating media in rather than with our lives. “If we consider the current opportunity living a media life gives us, we are able to create multiple versions of ourselves whilst also having the ability to edit all aspects of our life.” (Flew, 2014) How we decide to create, edit and showcase ourselves with the use of these new technologies is up to you and only you. References Deuze, M. (2011). Media Life - Media, Culture & Society 33 (1): 137-148. Indiana, USA: Sage Publications. Flew, T. (2014). New Media (4th Edition ed.). Melbourne , Victoria , Australia: Oxford University Press.
